What is it about?
This is a didactic piece of research based on iterative rounds of field-work in Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Romania, Albania) during 2011-2014. I discuss the experience of political ethnography under conditions of public contestations of an official state-led narrative on the socialist past. Another part of this reflection on the research experience highlights the interaction between theory-building, concepts and empirical reality.
Featured Image
Photo by Jack Hunter on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Field-work is usually compared to a process of peeling of the onion. I tend to use a different metaphor, namely that of a maze. According to this metaphor, in a field-research the researcher needs to keep a free-floating position and follow various traces, pick up the threads of the power game after periods of undoing and frustration, and even walk over, albeit misleading or dead end, the same paths. Thus, the researcher can reveal the latent contradictions of ideological discourses, power asymmetries, and relations between competing actors, institutions, and perspectives in the broader social context.
Perspectives
I considered it important to share my field-work experience and my reflections on it through this didactic piece at SAGE Methods Cases.
Sokol Lleshi
University of New York at Tirana
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Doing Field Research in State-Mandated Historical Memory Institutions: Institutional Access and Researchers’ Liminality, January 2019, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.4135/9781526465627.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
